


Songs of the Cobblestones

by TheBeastofBurton



Series: Songs of the Cobblestones [1]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Action/Adventure, Doom Upon All the World, F/F, In Hushed Whispers, Insecurity, Love, Wicked Eyes and Wicked Hearts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-06
Updated: 2015-07-08
Packaged: 2018-04-08 01:39:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4285743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheBeastofBurton/pseuds/TheBeastofBurton
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A story of faith, and its trials.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Immutable as the Substance of the Earth

**Chapter 1: Immutable as the Substance of the Earth**

_At last did the Maker_  
From the living world  
Make men. Immutable, as the substance of the earth  
With souls made of dream and idea, hope and fear,  
Endless possibilities.

_Threnodies 5:6_

            Elisabeth Trevelyan had always been confident in her position as the hero of her own story.  She just hadn’t given stock to the thought that the villains of said tale would be so bloody _wordy_.

            “You...are a _mistake_.  You never shoulder have existed.”

            The magister pulled out an amulet as he seethed, glowing that sickly, ominous shade of green that never brought anything good into her life.  She heard the other mage cry out.  Saw a line of force rip across the magister’s torso, knocking the evil trinket into the air.  Watched as it imploded into a tear in the very face of reality, pulling at everything from the air to the _light_ towards the lifeless black in its heart.

            Oh, _balls_ , she thought.

            She had barely closed her lips around the _b_ before the air was sucked from her lungs and the world went dark around her.

***

            “Blood of the Elder One!” she heard someone exclaim as she came back into awareness, choking on a mouthful of sickly, stagnant water as she did.  By this point in her strange, strange path through life she really shouldn’t have been surprised to feel the heat of a fireball sailing over top of her singe at the back of her neck, but she yelped nonetheless.  As she sloshed to her feet she saw a man in what was clearly a Tevinter’s armor burst into flames.  His stunned-into-inaction companion was easy enough to dispatch with her blessedly still attached knives.  She did not lower her weapons when she turned to face the caster.

            “What.  The.  Fuck,” she panted at Dorian, who looked to be equal parts disturbed and fascinated.

            “I...I’m not entirely sure, actually.”  He swiped some of the swampy water off his shoulders with a grimace.  “Displacement, perhaps.  The amulet must have moved us to what...the closest confluence of arcane energy?  It’s certainly not what Alexius intended, at least.”

            “The last thing I remember was being in the throne room,” Elisabeth said, glancing around the dank cell as the throbbing disorientation began to pass.  “Where in the Void are we now?”

            Realization dawned visually on Dorian’s face.  “Maker’s breath, it’s not where, it’s _when_!  The amulet must have moved us through time!”  He proceeded to explain the theory behind the magic with the excitement of a child at Solstice, which did nothing but confuse Elisabeth to the point of boredom.

            “If this isn’t what Alexius wanted to happen then what was?” she sighed wearily as she sheathed her knives.

            “I believe he was trying to remove you from time entirely.  So that you would never have been at the Temple of Sacred Ashes to foil his scheme.”

            “What a convoluted load of horse shit.”  Elisabeth slicked her hair back from her face and started towards the iron bars at the end of the chamber.  The lock on the door was more rust than metal, snapping open with little more than a terse glance in its direction.  Pleased with herself, she straightened and rolled her shoulders.

            “Time to save the day, again, then.”  She smirked and swept her arm out towards the open door. 

            “Shall we?”

***

            An hour and a handful of rather surprised guards later, Elisabeth found herself crouched down before a much more persistent lock, swearing under her breath each time her blood-slick hands slipped and scraped her tools against the innards of the mechanism.

            “All this lyrium is giving me a bloody migraine,” she growled, hissing in displeasure when her hand slid out again.

            “It’s _remarkable_ , isn’t it?” Dorian called out from across the metal walkway where he was examining a large stalagmite of it.  “I’ve never seen red lyrium before.  And it’s everywhere!  I wonder if they’ve found a way to cultivate it.”

            The lock finally popped open, the door behind it grinding back on rusted hinges.  “Perhaps a little less admiration of the crystallized evil and a little more working on that ‘get us back to the right time’ plan, Ser Pavus?” Elisabeth suggested with a grunt as she returned to standing.

            “You southerners and your honorifics.  So quaint.”  Dorian breezed past her with a winning smile before starting down the dimly lit stairway.  “We mustn’t get ahead of ourselves, my dear Herald.  Before our escape plan can solidify we must first find out how much time has passed in our absence, then deduce where we might find Alexius.”

             Elisabeth was so preoccupied with wondering if every Tevinter was so insufferably verbose that she failed to notice Dorian pulling to a sudden stop before a torch at the midpoint of the stairs, and walked right into his back.

            “Ow!  What the–”

            “This is veilfire,” he said abruptly, the tone of his voice far more sharp and worried than it had been not moments before.

            “So what?” Elisabeth asked, walking around him to examine the torch.  “Using ridiculous magic for perfectly ordinary things seems to be pretty normal for you lot.”

            “You don’t understand.  Veilfire is only possible where the Veil is incredibly thin.  Thousands upon thousands of deaths in the same space sort of thin.”

            “There was an incident during the Blight that wiped out about a third of the village, but that couldn’t have been more than a few hundred.”  A crawling feeling started creeping to life beneath her skin, the edge of something deep and unnamed.  “What does this mean, then?”

            “It means our timetable has been drastically accelerated.”  Dorian positioned his staff more aggressively as he started back down the stairs.  “We have to find out what happened while we were gone.”

            “Hold on,” Elisabeth called out as they reached the bottom, drawing the long knives strapped to her back.  “I think I hear someone in the block to the right.”

            The door was unlocked, groaning open under the weight of her shoulder.  She heard the sound again; not the snarl of startled soldier, but the rattling moan of a thing within sight of death.

            “Is someone there?” the voice asked, weak and heavily accented in the style of Orlais.  Elisabeth edged closer to the sound, rearing back in horror at the sight she found.

            “Bride of the fucking Maker!  Are you... _Fiona_?”

            “You’re alive?”  Her voice rang of hope, scratched and distorted as it was.  “But I saw you...the rift...”

            “Is that...is that lyrium growing _out of your body_?”

            “Yes,” Fiona ground out.  “Red lyrium is a disease.  With enough exposure, you become this.  Then they mine your corpse for more.”

            The crawling changed, sharpened into cold panic rippling up and down her arms.  The lyrium was _everywhere_ , growing up from the floor, down from the ceiling, snaking across the walls in a horrific reflection of geometry.  It was everywhere and it was _people_ , it was all people who had lived and breathed and died in the agony she saw etched into the Grand Enchanter’s face.

            “I’m...I’m so sorry,” Dorian startled, pale with revulsion himself.  “But can you tell us the date?  It’s very important.”  Fiona nodded.  Swallowed down her pain.

            “Harvestmere.  9:42 Dragon.”

***

            “There’s no way it’s been a year,” Elisabeth insisted again, hoping that if she said it often and loud enough that it might be true.  “The world couldn’t have ended in _one year_ without us here.”

            “It appears as though it not only can, but _has_ ,” Dorian replied as he forced open the rusting door to the next cell block.  “And I suggest you pull yourself together so we can find the associates of yours that Fiona mentioned and find out way to Alexius.”

            “I _am_ together,” Elisabeth hissed, cracking the flat of her hand against the damp stone wall and focusing in on the pain.  “This is just _insane_.”

            “Whozat, then?” she heard echo from the far end of the dank chamber.  “Back for another round, you frigging bastards?  _Bring it_!”

            That voice she knew, even through the lyrium’s distortion.  “Sera?” she called out, jogging down to the cell.  Sera was there, gaunt and snarling up against the iron bars.  When she saw Elisabeth, she recoiled with a look of utter horror.

            “Piss, not this again,” she whispered to herself.  “She’s dead.  Dead don’t come back, you know that, you _know that_.”

            “I’m no more dead that you are, you prat,” Elisabeth replied with a frantic little laugh, hoping to goad Sera into the banter she’d grown so fond of in their time working together.  Sera edged closer with narrowed eyes.  Maker, she was barely more than skin and bones.

            “Don’t do me much good, you shite demon.  I’m dead as the rest of them soon enough.”

            Her eyes were red as the lyrium, splintered through with fear and anger.  “Sera, it’s really me,” Elisabeth said more gently, voice shaking around the edges of the words as she took a step closer.  “Ask me anything.  Something they wouldn’t know.”

            “They know everything,” Sera spat, lurching forward to grab a handful of Elisabeth’s collar and yank her hard against the metal.  “They _are_ everything, and you’re frigging...”

            She stopped short.  Breathed in.

            “You’re her.”

            Elisabeth’s head was still spinning from contact with the bars, blood starting to drip thickly from her nose.  Sera released her with one hand and pushed open the unlocked cell door with the other.

            “Don’t know how, but it’s really her, Bull,” Sera called out.  “Probably means pretty-boy’s real, too, so don’t kill him, yeah?  Might need someone to magic through the door.”  Elisabeth looked unsteadily over her shoulder at where Dorian was, indeed, restrained in a chokehold by a hulking mass of Qunari.

            “Are you sure?  I really wanted to kill something,” the Iron Bull said with something akin to exasperation, releasing Dorian only to watch him crumple to the waterlogged floor, gasping.  “Like _really_ wanted.”

            Sera rolled her eyes and bent over to dig through a rotted chest in the opposing cell.  When she reentered the main block there was a worn-out bow slung over her shoulder.  She looked at Elisabeth expectantly.

            “Well?” she prodded.  “What’s the plan, Tadwinks?”

            “Plan?” Elisabeth spat out some of the blood that had leaked into the back of her throat.  “Tadwinks?”

            “S’a name, right?  Weren’t no Andraste for you to be the Herald of, was there?”  Elisabeth glanced briefly over at Bull as he made his way to the same cell, liberating a rusted broadsword from a growth of lyrium.  “Magister arsehole’s hold up in the throne room.  Big magic door in the way.  Gotta give us the plan.”

            “I...” Elisabeth stammered, struggled to find words under the pressure closing in around her chest.  Why shouldn’t they look to her, after all?  She was the hero.  She should know how to undo this wretched future.  Maker’s breath, even Dorian was looking at her now like he was waiting for the answer.  She had to think of something, _anything_ , but she couldn’t focus, couldn’t look away from the steel in Sera’s spine and the weight of exhausted resignation pushing down on Bull’s shoulders.

            “She’s two steps away from snapping,” Bull said gruffly, heading towards the stairwell outside the cell block.  “We should find Red.”

            “Red? Who’s...oh, wait,” Dorian quickly gathered his wits and followed Bull out the door.  “Perhaps you mean the red-headed Orlesian woman with the terrifying air of mystery that I met at Haven.  Whatever is she doing here?”

            Elisabeth didn’t hear the answer, could barely hear anything over the blood pounding in her ears.  What was she supposed to do now?  What in the _fucking Void_ was she supposed to do?

            “You never were more than people, were you?” Sera asked, approaching her with a cautious eye.  “Always thought you were more, right?  All touched and shite.  But you were just a person the whole time.”

            Elisabeth stared back at her, nodded faintly.  Sera pulled something that might have passed for a grim smile and punched Elisabeth’s shoulder.

            “I can do people.  C’mon.  Stuff to kill, yeah?  I’d frigging die to spit in that bastard’s eye at this point.”

***

            "I want the world back."

            The knife sheared across the throat of the ghoul who once was Felix, more tearing than slicing through the skin.  Black ichor ran thickly from the wound as he fell, and Alexius howled like a creature too far lost in grief for the reach of words.

            The battle that followed was swift, stalled only by the rending of a few half-formed rifts in the Veil.  Elisabeth noticed with a fresh dose of terror that the people she had known as friends moved with a reckless lethality she had never seen the like of.  Even Leliana, whom she respected above all others in the careful, controlled art of war, seemed to revel in the spilling of blood.  With each arrow she said a name beneath her breath.  Cassandra.  Josephine.  Cullen.  Alastair.  Solana.  Solana.  _Solana_.

            It was not long before Alexius fell, by that point little more than a mass of gore and shredded cloth.  Elisabeth glanced over at Dorian, who looked as aghast as she felt.

            "That was too easy," she said, throat hoarse with effort and smoke.  Dorian shook his head sadly as he liberated the corpse of the bauble that had brought doom upon all the world.  "What did he have to live for, after that?" he sighed.

            Elisabeth sat down shakily on the steps as Dorian continued; mechanically pulling out the oiled cloth she kept at her belt to clean her knives of blood.  "I suppose it's done now, though.  I should need about an hour to trace the magic and rebuild the spell to–"

            "An hour?" Leliana whipped towards them, sunken eyes still wild and feral from the kill.  "That's impossible.  You must go _now_."

            The ground began to rumble as she spoke, a deep roar shaking apart the stone from the mortar.

            "What in the Void is that?" Elisabeth yelled over the din.

            "How they won," Leliana replied darkly.  She started stalking around the throne room, scouting out defensible positions.  Sera stared up at the shuddering ceiling, swearing under her breath until Bull laid a broad hand on her shoulder.

            "Just another job.  Unless you don't think you beat me; with the vint, I'm up by three."

            "As if," she replied, shaking him off with a half-hearted, completely ineffective shove.  "Was an arrow that did him in."

            Leliana cut off the banter quickly as she circled back around.  "Go hold a line outside the door.  We must by them as much time as we can."

            "What do you mean, buy us time?" Dorian asked, "I assure you it won't take more than–"

            "The Elder One knows you are here," Leliana interrupted.  "He is descending upon the castle as we speak.  You are the only chance left of preventing this all from happening and you must go _now_."

            Sluggish understanding finally arrived at the forefront of Elisabeth's mind.  She stood back up so abruptly that she dropped one of her knives.

            "No," she tried to say in a commanding voice, wanting to wince when it cracked hysterically at the end of the word.  "Abso-fucking-lutely not.  I'm not going to let you _kill yourselves_!"

            Leliana regarded her impassively.  "Look at us.  We're already dead." She looked at Bull over her shoulder and jerked her head back towards the door.

            “Bull,” Elisabeth pleaded.  He spared her only a shrug and a regretful sigh as he started walking away. “Sorry, Boss.  Not your call.”

            “No,” Elisabeth repeated again as each of them turned their backs on her.  “No, no, _no_.  Stop this.  Stop.  Fucking _listen to me_!”  Only Sera seemed to hear her, hesitating slightly as she reached the threshold.  She looked back over at Elisabeth for a long moment before she turned and walked away from the door.

            “Praise Andraste,” Elisabeth sighed as she drew nearer.  “This can’t be the only solution.  I will find another way out, I swear I will, I just need–”

            Sera wrapped a hand around the jut of Elisabeth’s cuirass and yanked down, _hard_ , until their mouths were crushed together.  The shock of it nearly stopped Elisabeth’s heart.

            “You smell like cloves; from the rubbish you use to clean your knives,” Sera said tightly, eyes still closed.  “How I knew it was really you, right?  Can’t smell cloves without thinking of you and everything I didn’t have words for before you died.”

            “Sera?”  Elisabeth’s voice broke in the middle of the name, her hand shaking as she raised it to Sera’s face.  It was too little, too soon, too fast, too _fast._  Sera opened one red eye and flashed her a ghost of a grin.

            “S’the end of the road, Tadwinks.  Up to you to find a new one.”  She swallowed it down and looked up at Elisabeth very seriously.  “I’m shite at this.  Really, _really_ shite.  But we could be really real, you and me, if you take a chance.”

            “I...” Elisabeth choked out, frantically touching Sera’s face, neck, shoulders.  “Of _course_.”  Sera yanked down again and kissed her, messy and desperate.

            “Make it right, luv.”  She pressed the hilt of the fallen knife into Elisabeth’s hand and started towards the chamber door.  “See you on the other side.”

            Make it right, Elisabeth repeated to herself as Dorian worked on the amulet, swearing under his breath in Tevene.

            Make it right, as the impenetrable stone door began to splinter inward like so much rotten wood.

            Make it right, as the stuff of nightmares dropped the small, broken body with wide, dead eyes on the chamber floor.

            “ _No_!” Dorian yelled, grabbing her by the arm as she began to lurch towards the chaos, burning with the desire, the _need_ to give the grief clawing at her chest motion and violence.  “If you move, we’re all dead.”

            The world tore open behind him as Leliana, the Nightingale, the unconquerable hero of her girlhood imagination, fell.  She looked out at the swelling tide of certain death, and back to the yawning black of inescapable magic.  A jerk on her gauntlet, a stumble backwards, and the darkness swallowed her whole.

***

            The throne room was as they had left it; torchlit and thick with sour desperation.  Dorian said something beside her, light and sardonic even through the tremble of his voice.  Elisabeth was focused only on the magister, on the way his expression crumbled, the way he seemed to stagger backwards under the weight of his own despair.

            _Make it right_ , a ghost whispered in her ear.  She covered the distance in two big steps, closed her numb around the hilt of her knife and twisted it up out of the sheath at her belt.  A line of red opened up across Alexius’ throat as he collapsed to his knees, gurgling.  The blood sprayed out, spattered across her face as she watched him die like the animal he would have become.

            The stunned silence of the room exploded into chaos as his corpse hit the floor.

            “ _What_?”

            “Father! Oh, Maker...”

            “Andraste’s tits!”

            The knife clattered on the stone as it slipped from her hand.  She turned on her heel and started walking, throwing off every restraining hand that brushed against her armor.  Thirty steps to the door, left turn, twenty more to the great porch.  The night was cool and dry and lovely.  She walked into the railing, hard, bent around it, and vomited.

            “Oi, slow down you great... _ew_.”  She felt the muted pressure of a tentative hand laid on the back of her shoulder.  “What the frig was that, Tadwinks?”

            Elisabeth spat out the burning taste of sick in surprise.  “What did you just call me?”

            Sera edged a little closer, face set in discomfort at the edge of Elisabeth’s vision.  “What, Tadwinks?  Just a name, right?  You don’t like the whole Herald shite when you’re _not_ randomly offing magey gits, and I’m not about to call you something soft and nice like Bethy when you’re all blood and guts everywhere.”

            Her eyes were brown again, clear and sharp and cautious.  She watched Elisabeth expectantly.

            “I’m sorry,” Elisabeth said roughly as her knees began to buckle with relief.  Sera darted closer, half-holding Elisabeth up with one arm and clinging to the raining with the other.

            “Andraste’s underpants, you ruddy prat!” she exclaimed.  The surprise in her voice, the indignation, the edge of terrified concern; it was all so perfect, so _real_.  She let her head drop down on Sera’s shoulder and tried to remember to keep breathing.

            “Are you...are you _crying_?”  She felt a hand on her hair then, light and unsteady.  “What in the frigging Void happened to you in there?”

            “I had to make it right,” Elisabeth said, voice barely above a whisper.  “I had to make it right.”

            “It never went wrong,” Sera laughed uneasily.  “One minute you’re all snark and fancy words and he’s all ‘blah blah evil rubbish blah’, then you tripped into the magicky hole and walked right back out.  You’re really scaring me, yeah?  If you’re just having me on you’d better stop right now or I’ll stuff you so full of arrows they won’t be able to find a person under ‘em all.”

            Elisabeth wanted to laugh, but the sound came out wet and choked.

            “We need to get back, right?  I’m not the only one you scared.”

            No, Elisabeth thought.  They’ll have to know what happened, all of it, _all of it_.

            “Alright,” she said instead, biting down against the impotence burning underneath her skin as she pulled herself straight and stepped half away.  Sera stayed where she was, looking over cautiously.  Her face was tinged red, and she seemed uncomfortable maintaining eye contact.  Nonetheless she reached up and awkwardly bumped her hand up against Elisabeth’s cheek.  It came away wet.

            “Chin up, luv.  S’a win, this.  Even if all we got was a bunch of whinging mages.”

            “Maker, I don’t even know what to do with them now,” Elisabeth sighed shakily, running a hand through her hair.  Sera snorted, nudged Elisabeth with her shoulder as they walked.

            “On your own for that one.  I’ll help get you drunk once you pick, though.”

            “Might take a bit of doing after the day I’ve had.”  Elisabeth glanced at Sera from the corner of her eye.  “Sure you’ve the time for it?”  Sera glanced back, not quite shy enough to be bashful and not quite comfortable enough to be friendly.  It made Elisabeth’s chest ache with warm, dull hope.

            “For you?  Always.” 


	2. Lowest Slaves to Highest Kings

**Chapter 2: Lowest Slaves to Highest Kings**

_All men are the Work of our Maker’s Hands,_  
From the lowest slaves  
To the highest kings.  
Those who bring harm  
Without provocation to the least of His children  
Are hated and accursed by the Maker.

_Transfigurations 1:3_

            “Accompanying Grand Duke Gaspard this evening is Lady Inquisitor Elisabeth Alexandra Trevelyan, daughter of Bann Richard Winston Trevelyan of Ostwick.”

            “Please, make me sound _more_ pretentious,” Elisabeth muttered out of the side of her mouth before stepping forward to bow before the court, sporting the most _ridiculously_ fake smile Sera had ever seen.

            “Hold on to your underpants,” she whispered loud enough for Elisabeth to hear as she started down the stairs.  “Mine’s going to be even better.”

            While the announcer twat prattled on and on about crushing mages or some shite that barely resembled what they had actually got up to in the last half a year, Sera hovered behind one of the gilded columns and watched Elisabeth’s progress across the ballroom.  It was hard not to cheer out loud when she accepted a thin glass of fizzy wine from a passing servant.

            “Accompanying the Inquisitor are: Seeker Cassandra Allegra Portia Calogera Filomena Pentaghast, fourteenth cousin to the King of Nevarra, nine times removed, Hero of Orlais and Right Hand of the Divine; Madame Vivienne de Fer, First Enchanter of the Circle of Montsimard, Enchanter of the Imperial Court and Mistress to Duke Bastien de Ghyslain; and,” the announcer trailed off, squinting down at the parchment.

            “Her Ladyship Mai Bolsytch of Korse.”

            Elisabeth spat out a mouthful of wine all over some prissy little lordling, and Sera laughed so hard she fell over.

***

            She waited until she was sure Josephine’s back was turned before she pulled the worst face she could think of.  Ruddy, poncey bastards wither their starchy rules and stick-up-the-arse _expectations_ and–

            “You should be careful with that face,” someone said behind her.  “Wouldn’t want to get stuck like that.”

            “At least it’d liven up this powdery excuse for a party,” she grumbled, glancing over her shoulder.  Much as she hated to admit it, the whole noble getup really suited Elisabeth.  All broad shouldered and straight backed in the stiff dress coat, blue eyes glinting in the candlelight, dark hair pulled back enough to show off the firm line of her jaw.

            “See something you like?” she smirked as Sera turned herself all the way around.

            “You bet I do.  Gotten an eyeful of the Empress yet?  Magisterial tits if I’ve ever seen any.”

            Elisabeth snorted.  “You’ve got me there.  How are you doing over here?  Fitting in alright?  Or at least better than the person who covered a lesser du Launcet in expensive Chateau de Fermin?”

            Sera giggled, clapping a hand over her mouth before Josephine was alerted to the presence of fun again.  “That was the _best_ ,” she sighed happily.   “But other than that no one here even sees me, so that’s something.  Nothing more normal than an elf loitering around an Orlesian ballroom, right?”

            “It’s not loitering if you’re eating something.”  Elisabeth widened her smile and pulled a plate from behind her back.

            “Piss, are those what I think they are?”  Sera snatched one of the proffered tarts and scarfed it, groaning when the jam coated her tongue.  “I frigging _love_ blackberries.”

            “So I’ve heard,” Elisabeth laughed, breaking into a full-on grin at the confusion that passed over Sera’s face as she swallowed.  “I do listen when you speak, you know.”

            “I...uh,” Sera stumbled, making some awful little squeaky noise in the back of her throat when Elisabeth pressed forward, crowding her against the wall.  “Whatchya–”

            “You’ve got a little something...” Elisabeth trailed off in that stupidly attractive raspy voice she got when she was turned on, leaning in and pressing her lips to the corner of Sera’s mouth.  Sera turned her head into the flicker of tongue with a growl of approval because this was _so_ a better way to pass time before the Vena-whatsit arseholes stuck their heads out.  _Frig_ , was she good at kissing.

            “Elisabeth?  Maker’s breath, where did she get off to.  No, no, please Councilor, just wait right here and I’ll locate the Inquisitor for you.”  Sera could feel the moment slide away even before Elisabeth pulled back.

            “Ah well,” Elisabeth mumbled against Sera’s mouth, leaning in once more before taking a step back.  “No rest for the wicked, I suppose.”  She reached for Sera’s hand, brought it up to her lips and kissed the knuckles, like she would’ve with a proper lady.  “I hope you’ll save me a dance later.”

            “I don’t,” Sera started, trying to put words to the mess of discomforting churning in her gut.  “That’s not me, Tadwinks.”

            But Elisabeth was already gone, parting the crowd before her with nothing more than the strength of her presence.

***

            The feeling only deepened as the night went on, taking a sharp plunge towards the worse after their encounter in the abandoned guest-wing.  She watched Elisabeth closely as she interacted with the elfy 'ambassador' person, Briala or whatever.  It was one thing to watch her be all courtly and rigid in the fancy dress getup they all had to put on for the party, but it was another thing entirely to see that posture, that _stiffness_ in the leather armor that she practically lived in.

            The set of her shoulders relaxed slightly when Briala skittered away all dramatically, settling closer back to how they should be.

            "Didn't know you were into the whole Sneaky Stabbington bit," Sera said lightly as they started after Cassandra and Vivienne back in towards the main palace, bumping Elisabeth with her shoulder.  Elisabeth laughed a little, bumping Sera back.

            "I'm not really," she replied.  "Far too much intrigue for my tastes.  She just reminds me of one of my first teachers."

            "You had a teacher like that?  All knives and whinging and 'ooh the oppression of my people will be avenged'?"

            "Well, alright, maybe not exactly like that, but similar in other ways."  Elisabeth got a far off look as she talked.  "She was a thief who got indentured to my family after being sold out on a bad job.  She loathed my parents and my brat of an older brother, so I of course thought she was the most amazing thing since the printing press."

            Sera watched her hand drift to the worn little belt knife she always had on her.  "Growing up, I was expected to learn how to be a lady of the court, aspire to a profitable marriage.  I hated it, everything about it, and I begged Miren to show me how to be like her.  It took two years of constant wheedling for her to even show me how to hold a knife properly."

            "What else did she teach you, then?" Sera asked with a frown.  "Because this is sounding a lot like another thing to go on my list of 'Bethy's Former Lovers I Need To Punch'."

            Elisabeth chuckled ruefully.  "She'd be at the top of that last, actually.  She was my first."

            Sera bristled at the thought.  "What happened to her then?  No riding off into the sunset for the little lady?"

            "No." Elisabeth's smile turned sad.  "When her term of indenture expired she said to me, 'Thanks for the fun, shem,' and left without another word."  She scratched at the back of her head, like she did when she was embarrassed.  "I was very angry about it for a long time, but I think I'm almost grateful to her now."

            " _Why_?" Sera asked, frigging _outraged_.  Dropping someone like Elisabeth like a sack of shite, the bloody nerve of the bitch.  Forget the punching list, someone just got fast-tracked to the top of the 'Arrow To The Face' list.

            "Because," Elisabeth answered, dropping an arm around Sera's shoulders and pressing a kiss to her temple.  "She taught me how to be the person you seem to like so much."

            "Yeah, well."  Sera almost relaxed into the gesture, into the smell and the strength of her, but that gnawing cold in the pit of her stomach still wouldn't quit.  "Whole night's got me wondering which you's the real one, yeah?"

            "This one," Elisabeth replied without hesitation.  With a sideways grin she brushed the hand on Sera's shoulder against her face, smearing sticky, half-dried blood everywhere.  "All blood and gut everywhere, right?"  Sera threw her off with a squawk, because _gross_.

            "Prat," she accused, trying to scrub the mess off before she got told off by Lady Priss-Pants again.

            "You know you love it," Elisabeth grinned, leaping out of the way when Sera took a swat at her.

            Sera did not, but she might’ve loved _her_.  She felt all warm and squishy on the inside when she thought about it, about Elisabeth, about her laugh and her smile and the way she made pathetic little snuffling noises like a pup when she was really hard asleep.

            A bell began to toll nearby.  The set of her shoulders changed again, and the warm feeling went off as quick as it'd started.

            Call it a mask or a bad old habit, but Sera could see the difference between the woman she knew and the Lady she didn't.  She hung back and watched Elisabeth walk to catch up with the others, the ones who knew something about the fiddly court rubbish.  The cold got worse, sharper and heavier.

            She could love Elisabeth, but Lady Trevelyan might as well've been every other faceless noble she'd ever wanted to spit on.

***

            She didn’t want to watch it.  In fact, watching it was just about the _last_ thing in the entire world she wanted to be doing.  But the crowd had forced her right up against the marble railing and it was like staring at a carriage wreck, watching the single greatest thing to ever come into her life slip away like so much sand.

            The bitch had snared Elisabeth the second she reentered the ballroom, all pointy smiles and shite propriety.  Taken her arm and led her down, even when Sera could see angry panic cracking through Elisabeth’s mask of disaffected calm.  But after the dance started, she changed.

            The movement of it was as intricate as it was effortless.  Like she’d done this a thousand times with a thousand different girls, which she probably had.  They were talking underneath the music, private and quiet-like, but when they swung closer to the side Sera could hear what they were saying.  Hear, but not understand because it was frigging Orlesian.  Stupid, flawless, impenetrable _Orlesian_ and it was _Bethy’s_ mouth moving over the words.

            _Her_ Bethy.  The one who laughed until beer came out her nose and helped out the little people without Sera even having to make her and always, _always_ stayed until the morning, no matter how early anyone else needed her.  Her Bethy didn’t sound like this, didn’t move like this, didn’t smile that pointy smile when she spun the Duchess around.  This was just pretending, just a mask like all the others.  Wasn’t it?

            No, Sera thought through the ice knotting up her insides; no, it wasn’t.  _This_ was who she was, where she belonged.  Dancing across marble floors in the candlelight with scary beautiful women.  Not slumming it with some freak too human to be elfy and too elfy to be human.

            “She’s doing quite well, wouldn’t you say?” she heard someone ask beside her.  She knew the voice, the haughty ring of it prickling the hair on the back of her neck, but stayed stiff and quiet when she realized it wasn’t talking to her.

            “I would.  She dances a great deal better than I, at any rate.”

            Vivienne laughed lightly, the sound of it setting Sera’s teeth on edge.  “It’s terrible of me to say, but I’m rather surprised at how smoothly our negotiations have gone this evening.  Elisabeth a dear girl, but one can so easily forget her nobility with the... _company_ she keeps, shall we say.”

            Cassandra made a muted sound of agreement.  “Frankly, I would rather not make issue of it at all, but it seems to be all these people wish to discuss.  Orlesians exhaust me.”

            “Ah, my dear Seeker.  The Game is always so trying on new players.  It shouldn’t be too difficult a position to present; it seems almost tradition among the nobility of the Free Marches to have dalliances with elves.  We need only emphasize Elisabeth’s youth, her potential for growth once she’s had her fun.”

            Sera felt sick.  Sick and shamed and so frigging angry she could _spit_.  All that time watching her, waiting for the signs, and she was nothing but the frigging punch line _again_. 

            The song ended with a flourish and a round of applause.  Elisabeth offered up an arm and led the duchess off the floor, glancing up at the crowd with careful disinterest as she did.  When she found Sera she winked.

            Frigging _winked_.

            Sera had to leave before she killed someone. 

***

            “Sera, please just tell me what I did?”

            She sounded haggard, like the weight of the whole night was pushing down on her shoulders.  Sera almost felt bad for her before she remembered how frigging _mad_ she was.

            “I’m sorry for whatever it is.  Honest.”

            Sera scoffed.  Sorry, she was now.  After the fact didn’t count for _shite_.

            “Sweetheart, _please_.”  Gentler voice this time, sad and pleading with a hand brushing against her own.

            “No you don’t,” Sera snapped, swatting the hand away.  “Not getting chummy with you while you still have another woman’s stink on your collar.”

            “That’s what this...Florianne backed me into dancing with her!  You _saw_ it.  I didn’t want to, you must know that.”

            “Because _wanting_ seems to count for so much with you, _Lady Trevelyan_.”

            The exhausted sigh that answered her made the anger prick fresh under her skin.  “Maker’s breath, it’s like talking to a stone wall.”

            There was a clatter from down the hall then, followed by a slightly strained, “Elisabeth, dear, would you come assist us for a moment?”

            “It never ends with this lot.”  Elisabeth’s face set as she loosened the peace ties on her knives.  “Stay here and check for any sign of Gaspard’s mercenaries.  I can’t watch you and deal with this new mess at the same time.”

            Sera _seethed_.  Watch her?  _Watch her_?  Like she was some child in need of protecting?  Frigging pretentious, condescending, holier-than-thou _arsecanoe_.  The only one who watched out for Sera was Sera; always had been, always would be.  Didn’t need some not-maybe-probably noble _bitch_ to do what no one else had ever bothered to do.  Andraste, she was such a frigging idiot for thinking Elisabeth was different, acting like people instead of like the pissant of a stuffed shirt she really was.  Oh, she’d see who needed watching alright.  See it right at the end of an arr–

            Oh.

            Well that was a rift, wasn’t it.

            Shite, shite, arse, piss.  She started firing at anything she could sight, which was a throng of scary-demony things oozing out of the hole in the world like puss.  Elisabeth and Cassandra were down in the thick of it, hacking away at anything that moved while Vivienne magicked off to the side.  It was almost done now, monsters tapering off into nothingness.  Until one last one fizzed into being right in front of Sera.

            Andraste, it was the really scary kind.  Half demon, half mage, all crackling with lightning and laughing down at her as it floated up in the air.  She couldn’t move.  She was so scared and she couldn’t move and she was going to die and get dragged off into the Void with nothing and no one and–

            And someone tackled her to the ground.

            Elisabeth slid further out as they landed, lightning arcing all over her body as Cassandra lopped the head off the demon.  The marked hand rose up and locked with the rift almost like it was moving itself, twisting and jerking until the hole sealed shut with a stinking rush of magic.  The arm fell heavily, and Elisabeth started thrashing on the ground like someone with the falling sickness.

            “Hey, hey, stop.”  Sera scrambled over on her hands and knees, struggling to hold Elisabeth’s shoulders to the ground.  “Stop it.  It’s over now, yeah?  You sealed it all up.  Stop!”

            She did stop.  Thrashing, moving.  Breathing.

            “Ha, very funny.  C’mon now, luv, enough playing.  Show’s me for being a bitch, right?  Wake up.”  She shook Elisabeth her shoulders, panic rising when her chest remained deathly still.  “Wake up.  Wake _up_.  Bethy, come on, you have to breathe.  Breathe!”

            “Get off of her, you _wretched little imp_ ,” Vivienne snarled, yanking Sera backwards by her collar.  Sera stumbled to her feet, watching in horror as Vivienne started squishing down on Elisabeth’s chest, throwing her whole weight into the motion over and over and over.  She didn’t even stop when the unmistakable sound of a rib cracking snapped through the air.

            “What the frig are you _doing_?” Sera yelled, grabbing a loose rock and cocking her arm back to throw it right at the insane bitch’s head.  “You’re _hurting her_!  Stop it now or so help me I’ll –”

            A plate-armored arm clamped around her shoulders while a gauntled hand forced her arm down into a useless defensive position.  “She is helping, Sera.  Elisabeth’s heart has stopped; Vivienne must force it to start working again.”

            Her heart had stopped.  Stopped meant dead.

            “She’s...she’s not,” Sera choked on the word, unable to make it real, feeling her own chest collapse in on itself.  How could she be dead, she was _invincible_.  Touched by a god, _the_ God, and she’d gone and _thrown away her life_ for Sera.

            One more push and Elisabeth’s chest heaved up on its own in a hoarse, violent gasp.  Cassandra and Vivienne both seemed to get shaky with relief when she rolled over on her side and started coughing.

            “Thank the Maker,” Cassandra sighed, releasing her hold on Sera.

            “Elisabeth, darling, that was an _incredibly_ foolish thing to do,” Vivienne said as she helped Elisabeth sit up.  “You need to think about the repercussions of your actions before you perform them, and understand your worth to our cause.”

            Cassandra walked over and firmly pulled Elisabeth to her feet.  “She is right.”

            “I did think,” Elisabeth insisted, her voice weak and rough beneath the coughing.  She looked straight at Sera and flashed a weak, bloody smile.

            “She’s worth more.”

***

            Piss, what a night.  Sera’d had enough of Orlais to last another six lifetimes, and that was before the whole dramatic courtly shite that had left her Royal Bitchiness in chains and the pretty empress snogging on the Briala person.  Drinks weren’t half bad, though.  Elisabeth’d love it, if she could just find her again.

            Sidestepping a gaggle of drunken lordlings, she caught a flash of Inquisition red through the door to the balcony.  Another scary woman with a prissy little sneer breezed by her but all she could see was Elisabeth, leaning alone over the railing outside.  Right away, Sera felt all sharp and anxious.  It was too frigging close to that night at Redcliffe.

            “Whatchya doing out here, Tadwinks?” she asked too cheerfully, walking up next to Elisabeth and nudging at her shoulder.  “Missing the fun part, right?  That du Launcet you spewed on is chucking guts into some lord-git’s helmet.”

            Elisabeth snorted as she glanced over.  “I just needed a little air.  Uncovering an assassination plot before the court after not-quite-dying really takes it out of a girl.”

            “I bet.”  Sera reached out hesitantly, tucking a stray bit of hair behind Elisabeth’s ear.  She still didn’t really know what she was doing, being the gentle one for once, but Elisabeth liked to be touched and _frig_ , Sera wanted to be the one touching her.  “Want to go get really, really stupid on all their expensive booze?”

            Elisabeth laughed.  “Tempting, but I think I’ll have to pass.  I’d rather stay out here in the quiet.”  She looked over at Sera then, all soft eyes and dopey smile, like she thought Sera might’ve hung the stars, and it was wonderful and terrifying and she needed to make a joke or something before everything went pear-shaped again and–

            “You know, after everything that’s happened tonight, I’m fairly certain I owe you a dance,” Elisabeth said, leaning up straight and offering Sera a hand in what she supposed was a dashing gesture.  Embarrassment started creeping up her neck, hot and shameful.

            “Don’t be stupid,” she responded sharply.  “C’mon, let’s go inside already.”

            “What’s stupid?  You’re the only one I’ve actually _wanted_ to dance with since we arrived.”

            I don’t know how, alright?” Sera blurted out, red faced and focused on her feet until she found the presence of mind to storm off.  Ruddy prat, going and ruing everything after she’d just manage to set it right again.  An arm wrapped around her waist before she got the chance to leave.

            “Nonsense,” Elisabeth smiled at her, the squirmy mix of kind and pleased and not at all full of herself.  “Everyone can dance.  You just need the right partner.”

            She shifted a little closer and grabbed hold of one of Sera’s hands.  “Let me hold your hand out like this, and now you rest your other one on my shoulder.  There you go, just like that.”  Elisabeth’s hand slid up from her waist until her arm was tucked beneath Sera’s.  “Now all that’s left is doing what you do best.”

            “What’s that, then?” Sera asked suspiciously as Elisabeth grinned.

            “The opposite of what I say.”

            She pulled Sera closer still and started to move.  “This is called a waltz, and it moves in threes.  Up, left, together.  Back, right, together.”

            It took a few minutes of trodding all over Elisabeth’s feet, but Sera picked it up.  Back instead of up, right instead of left.  She stared down in amazement when they actually started moving together.

            “I’m dancing,” she said dumbly.  “ _We’re_ dancing.”

            “We are,” Elisabeth agreed, bringing their joined hands in a little to tip Sera’s chin up.  “I bet you’re even good enough at it now that I can look at you instead of watching our feet.”  The change startled Sera into a stumble, but Elisabeth just smiled and started counting softly as she held Sera’s eyes.  One, two, three, one, two, three.

            _Andraste_ , she was so lovely.  From her stupidly blue eyes to the new burn scarred into the back of her hand, still rough and raised under Sera’s fingers.  She was warm and solid and smelled like she should again, cloves and leather and a little bit like the pine resin Sera used to fletch her arrows.  She pulled that smile, the one where she only used half her mouth, and Sera loved her like nothing she’d ever loved before.

            “Ever do it on a balcony, Tadwinks?” she said instead, grinning lewdly to hide the terrifying tightness in her chest.  Elisabeth looked thoughtful for long enough that Sera thought hard about smacking her upside the head, but she broke into a playful smirk and deftly spun Sera around until she was pinned to the railing.

            “Can’t say that I have, actually.  We’ll have to try it some time.”

            “What’s wrong with now?” Sera asked through a hitch of breath as Elisabeth lifted her up to sitting on the marble.

            “Not now,” Elisabeth replied in _that_ voice, low and breathy in Sera’s ear, “because now I’m going to take you out of here on my arm so these poncey cheese-mongers can see whose bed the Herald of Andraste keeps warm at night.  Then, when we get back to the guest quarters, we are going to wreck every, single, flat surface we can find.”

            Sera giggled at that, excited and nervous and completely arse over frigging tits for this woman.  “Not gonna drop me, are you?” she asked, sparing a cautious glance at the dark garden a ways below where she found herself precariously balanced.

            Elisabeth stepped even closer, pulling Sera’s legs around her waist with a little laugh, managing to make one little word feel like castle.

            “Never.”


	3. Let Chaos Be Undone

**Chapter 3: Let Chaos be Undone**

_Now her hand is raised_  
A sword to pierce the sun  
With iron shield she defends the faithful  
Let chaos be undone

_Victoria 1:3_

            Maker, it was so _cold_.  It was in her bones this time, splintering out into the muscle around them under it ripped at her skin.  The air was filled with ice, slicing against her face in the bitter wind.  There was nothing around her but a frozen wasteland, littered with blackened remains of the first place she had thought to call home since she fled the Marches.

            One more step, she ordered, screamed, _begged_ herself to take.  They have to be looking for you.  They wouldn’t leave you here to die in the snow.  You have to help them.  Just take one more step.  One more step.

            But then the snow was gone, replaced by stone slicked with rain and ichor and blood.  Shaking beneath her feet, crumbling.  She stumbled backward, trying to run from that unearthly green light as it devoured the fortress.

            “ _This is who they send to best me_?” he whispered in her head, the sound of it thundering through her frozen bones.  “ _A foolish little girl, frightened by the darkness?  You are nothing.  You affect **nothing**. I will peel apart this sham of a life you have built piece by piece until it is as empty as you are.  Everything you love will die from your pathetic inability, and I will look upon your anguish and **laugh**._ ”

            The ground was gone and she was falling, falling into the light, _through it_ , hurtling toward the–

***

            Sera jerked into awareness at the sound of her door creaking open.

            “Wuzgoinon?” she mumbled blearily, squinting to make sense of the silhouette leaning against the doorjamb.  When recognition clicked in she propped herself up on her elbows.

            “Tadwinks?”

            “ _Hi_ ,” Elisabeth drawled lazily, stumbling into the room and yanking the door closed behind her.

            “Thought you went off to bed,” Sera yawned, sitting all the way up and watching Elisabeth as her eyes adjusted to the darkness.  “Piss, what time is it?”

            “Late.  Or maybe early.  I never know which one’s right.”  Elisabeth hiccupped slightly at the end of the word, tripped over her own untied bootlaces.

            “Are you drunk?”  Drunk Elisabeth was usually hilarious, but something was off.  Far off.

            “In- _credibly_ ,” Elisabeth replied.  “I thought it might make me feel less horrible, and it did!  We have some good booze here, did you know that?”

            “I did,” Sera answered cautiously as Elisabeth sat down heavily next to her.

            “Of course you did.  You’re so clever.”  She had on a sloppy grin and stank of liquor.  “You smell good.”

            Sera batted Elisabeth’s hand away when it started to wander up her side.  “No, you don’t; something’s off.  Talk.”

            “Can’t.”  The smile faltered.  “Had a bad dream.  You don’t like dreams.”

            A truer statement had never been said.  The last nightmare Sera’d had shook her up for days, left her frightened and angry until Elisabeth had tricked her back into sense with words that still felt too new and unreal to think of often.

            Elisabeth took on a haunted look, physically withdrawing.  “S’not always dreams.  Loud noises do it, too.  Worry every time I see a bloody spider that m’actually still in the Fade.”

            “Of course you’re not, you prat,” Sera insisted, reaching out to touch Elisabeth’s arm.  “It’s all real out here.  Really real.”

            “Really real,” Elisabeth repeated, looking more like she wanted to cry rather than be relieved.  Sera tried touching her again, running a hand up to her shoulder and squeezing.

            “I can’t watch you die again,” she breathed out.  Sera almost recoiled at the words; what a frigging disturbing thing to say, especially after talking about all the dream rubbish.  When had she died in the first place?  Elisabeth was the one who’d almost–

            “You know how I feel about you, right?” Elisabeth said suddenly, urgently.  “I didn’t know it then but I do now.”

            “I know, alright.”  Sera almost grinned as she remembered the end of that night, reached up a little further and tweaked a fading bruise on the side of Elisabeth’s neck.  “Marked you up and everything, didn’t I?”

            That was supposed to make her laugh, or turn her on or _something_ other than look over with sad, scared eyes.  Piss, what was Sera supposed to do?

            “Lie down,” she said abruptly, pushing back on Elisabeth’s shoulder.  Elisabeth had barely made it from confused to a ready for it leer before Sera cut her off.  “Not like that, you twat.  Gotta sleep this off, yeah?  You’re going to feel a right tit in the morning.”

            “But–”

            “Down,” Sera ordered, pushing harder.  Elisabeth’s shirt rode up as she fell back, and Sera’s fingers skidded over a strip of skin that was cold as ice.  “Ruddy Void, how long were you outside?”

            She didn’t wait for an answer, getting up and walking over to her cabinet instead.  Her favorite blanket was jammed up in a back corner, sheepskin and thick, soft cotton.  It took one last shove to get Elisabeth all the way flat so Sera could crawl over top of her with the blanket in tow.

            “Can’t stop the crazy, but I’ll keep your daft arse warm.”

            Elisabeth squirmed around a little underneath her, tried some half-formed nonsense protests, but eventually wrapped her arm around Sera and started to relax.  By the time her breathing was slow and even, Sera felt steady enough to sleep again.

***

            Elisabeth felt wretched when she woke, dry-mouthed and throbbing with hangover.  It took a handful of confusing moments to orient herself, remember why her arm was soundly numb while the rest of her was finally warm.

            Sera was curled up between her side and the window, blanketed and snoring softly into her shoulder.  It was a rather surprising sight.  Maker, she looked so _young_ like this, so at ease, so unlike the wild girl she let the world see her as.  How easy it would be for Elisabeth to lose herself in the smell of her, to be washed back to sleep on the tide of her breathing.

            Someone knocked on the door then.  Louder, more insistent than the wrapping that had pulled Elisabeth awake in the first place.

            "G'way," Sera groaned, raising one arm in an abortive flailing gesture at the door.

            "I'm sorry, Miss; I...I was told to find the Inquisitor and I can't anywhere.  Is she here?"

            Elisabeth twisted slightly to press her lips to Sera's hair before trying to slide out from under her as smoothly as she was able.  Sera grumbled wordlessly and dragged the blanket up over her head while Elisabeth shuffled to the door.

            "Yes?" she asked sharply upon yanking it open, regretting the tone almost instantly when a look of pure terror flashed over the servant's face.  "I mean, what can I help you with?"

            "I'm terribly sorry, milady, but the Lady Morrigan wishes to speak with you as soon as possible.  Upmost urgency, she said."

            Elisabeth sighed deeply and pinched the bridge of her nose.  "Very well, thank you for delivering the message."  The acerbic guilt of her behavior chewing at her insides did nothing to help the rising nausea brought on by verticality.  "You're Miller, right?  How's your boy doing?"

            The man looked shocked and slightly in awe of the inquiry.  "Much better, Your Worship.  The healers say it won't be but a fortnight now before he's ready for a cane.  I can't believe you remembered."

            Elisabeth gave him a tight smile and dug a couple sovereigns out of her pocket.  "Give him my best.  And a sweet or two."

            "Of course, _of course_.  Thank you so much, milady."  He bowed deeply and profusely before finally departing.  Elisabeth closed the door, leaned her aching head against the cool wood before turning around.

            "If you're too important to have a proper lie-in anymore, we're done," Sera mumbled as Elisabeth settled herself on the floor with her back up against the bench.  The threat was somewhat diminished by the hand that wormed its way out of the blanket and mussed up Elisabeth's hair.

            "I'll make it up to you later," Elisabeth sighed, leaning her head back against the muted shape of Sera's hip bone.  "I've last night to make up for already, anyways."

            Sera made a muffled sound of indifference and patted Elisabeth clumsily before withdrawing into to her blanket.  "Come back to bed, prat."

            Elisabeth could think of nothing she wanted more, but the call of duty could not be ignored.  "I have to go; Morrigan needs to speak with me about something.  The joys of running a small principality are boundless."

            "Better you than me.  She’s weird.  Bad weird."  Sera stuck her head out of the top of the blanket and watched with bleary eyes as Elisabeth pushed herself back to standing.

            "All better now?  No more dream shite?"

            "From your mouth to Andraste's ears," Elisabeth replied even as the memory of fear crawled under her skin, sluggish and cold.  Sera looked content enough with the answer, grinned up at her sleepily.

            "Good.  Back soon, right?  Plenty of other bed things to get up to."

            “Of course.”  The words sounded hollow, distant.  Sera’s smile slipped into a puzzled frown, and Elisabeth forced herself out the door before the questions could come.

***

            The lock clicked open at last, and Sera crowed with delight.  She liked this game, the one where she and Elisabeth made increasingly over-complicated locks on all their things to challenge each other.  She especially liked that she was winning now.

            Elisabeth had been meeting with the pretty witchy person for donkey's years now, and Sera had reached her limit of waiting around doing nothing.  Add in the weird night and Elisabeth's even weirder mood when they woke up and there was only one solution.

            Pranks.

            "Right, luv," she said under her breath as she closed the door behind her.  "Time to cheer you the arse up."

            What to do, what to do.  Mismatch the shoes, maybe?  No, she didn't pay enough attention to notice something like that, then her feet'd get all sore and she'd get all grumpy.  Shirts, then?  Ugh, no, if she showed up to one of Josephine's diplomacy thingamawhatsits in a wonky shirt there'd be no end to it.  Oh!  _Underpants_!  Steal all the underpants!

            "Brilliant," Sera congratulated herself as she set about the job.  She shuddered when a gust of wind cut across the room from the opened door to the balcony.  "No wonder you were so cold, you daft tit," she muttered, taking a detour to the closet to knick a coat.  She saw Elisabeth's favorite right away, rough, sturdy wool, worn at the elbows.  The sleeves hung down past Sera's hands when she pulled it on, but it was nice.  Warm.  Smelled like her.

            Satisfied, she hurried back across the room to raid the dresser.  The second drawer proved the stash, and she gleefully began to shove underpants into her pockets by the handful.  Good thing she grabbed the coat, as well; her own pockets barely held a few pairs.

            Something in the coat's pocket caught against her fingertips.  Round, sewn into the lining.  She paused, putting back a handful to free up a hand to pick at it.  Took a while; it was _in there_.

            "Ah- _ha_!  Gotcha, bastard."  The last seam popped and she pulled out her hand to reveal a ring.  "What the..."  Sure, it was pretty and all; plain band, reddish-gold, easy handful of sovereigns on the street.  But why in the ruddy world was it sewn in Elisabeth's pocket?  Was it from an old lover?  Was it _for_ an old lover? One she wasn't done with in her head?  One who she thought was better than—

            "Piss," Sera scowled down at the thing, swallowed up with the urge to chuck it out into the mountains at the thought.  She restrained herself, barely, instead taking it up and jamming it down on her own finger to prove the point.  Were it for a human's hand, it'd be too big, for an elf without an archer's scars too small and it fit her just...just right, actually.  Slid down over the second knuckle and rested neatly at the base of her finger.

            " _Piss_ ," she whispered in disbelief, staring at it.  Elisabeth was supposed to have been _joking_ about this.  She'd laughed after she'd said it and everything.

            Light flooded the room all of a sudden, stinging at her eyes.  It was green, she noticed distantly.  Magic green.  Breach green.

            She could see it then, clear as day.  The Breach, the end, all of it.  She ran out of the room as fast as she'd ever run in her life.

            The whole keep was in chaos, the town outside even worse.  Sera fought her way through the crowd as best she could manage.  By the time she made it out to the stairs, the bailey was roiling with soldiers.  She looked for the flash of dark hair in the sea of metal, and picked it out close to the tavern.

            "Bethy!" she yelled, loud enough to hurt her throat and startle the handful of people clustered around her.  Elisabeth turned towards the sound, saw Sera and started muscling her way back towards the keep. 

            Sera met her halfway there.

***

            The battle was an inescapable rush of violence.  For years afterward, Elisabeth would only remember the scorched stone and searing lyrium, the black burn of running, _running_ , the sliding tear of steel through muscle.  Until that moment.

            The moment where the orb flew into her marked hand as if it was always meant to.

            The moment where the manifestation all her fears _knelt before her_ in defeat.

            She could feel the magic everywhere around her, thick and suffocating and uncontrollable as smoke.  There was an unseen force pulling steadily upon her arm.  After all that had transpired, she finally knew what it wanted of her.  Unafraid, she let it happen.

            Her arm jerked and locked with the Breach far above them, the choking rush of magic surging up through the connection, using her as the conduit she had been branded as at the start.  It was over in an instant.  Sealed forever.

            The Herald's purpose, done at last.

            "You want in to the Fade?" she roared, voice raw and manic as the orb fell from her grasp.  The magic was still there, crackling across her palm, and she was no longer its tool. 

            She reached out her hand towards the monster, let her fingers catch in the threadbare Veil, and _tore_.  He barely had time to scream before he was devoured by the light.

            Elisabeth let out a single burst of disbelieving laughter before ruins in the sky began to fall, a chunk of stone cracking hard across the back of her skull as they did.  She knew nothing but ringing darkness and the sickening disorientation of falling for more time than she could comprehend.

            She woke to the sound of her name being called.

            "Elisabeth!" she heard Cassandra say again, someone where off in smoldering rubble.  "Are you alive?"

            "Maybe," she managed to reply hoarsely, much too quiet to be heard over din of a mountain crumbling back to the earth.  There were other voices, other variations of invocation, but only one that she wanted to hear.

            "Bethy?  Piss, woman, answer already!  If you're dead I swear to frigging Andraste I'll–"

            "You'll what?" Elisabeth called out with a grin as the cadence of Sera's steps drew closer.  "I bet you don't have two arrows left after all that."  Sera yelped at the sound, skidding and scrambling through the ashes until Elisabeth finally saw her.

            “Ruddy frigging _arsehole_ ,” she hissed as she began frantically digging Elisabeth out of the drift of debris that had settled over her.  “Scared me half to death, you did.  What did I tell you about running off by yourself to deal with Coryphy-shit?  _Don’t_!  That’s what I told you!”

            Sera managed to free her after a few moments, pulling her up hard enough to bring the dull ache in her ribs into a piercing clarity.  The grit that coated Sera’s armor bit into Elisabeth’s cheek.   “We should probably tell the others, shouldn’t we?” she asked wearily.  Sera shook her head violently and tightened her hold even further.

            “Uh-uh.  I need you before they need they need the Inquisitor.”

            Elisabeth laughed, turned her face into the sticky warmth of blood and smoke that clung to Sera’s skin.

            “Love you, too,” she sighed, whole, victorious, and tired enough to sleep for an age.

***

            Morning came on slow.  Might’ve been the surviving the end of the world thing, or the three tankards of beer she downed at the party, or the four or five hours of rolling around with Elisabeth after that, but whatever.  Slow.  It was nice.

            Elisabeth was sprawled out half-beside-half-on-top of her, having fallen asleep not long before the sun started rising.  The good kind of sleep, too; all loose muscles and deep breathing.  Bruises and scrapes from the fight were just beginning to show on her arm and legs, but Sera’d made sure she wouldn’t be feeling anything but good today.  Done a ruddy fine job of it, too, if she said so herself.

            Sera was getting a little sore, though.  The arm under Elisabeth’s neck prickled with numbness, and a stitch was building in her side from the weight spread across her middle.  She spared a last look at Elisabeth, face mostly hidden by a mess of dark, sweat-stiff hair, and started to wiggle her way to freedom.

            The room outside was colder than it should have been because some daft arsehole forgot to close the balcony door.  Again.  It was a good thing getting laid left Sera in such a spectacular mood, else she might’ve brought the blanket along with her and left Elisabeth to fend for herself.  She snorted and settled for snatching Elisabeth’s forgotten dress shirt up off the floor, dragging it on as she padded across the room.  It was weirdly warmer by the outside, so she stuck her head out the door.

            The sun was coming up behind what was left of the Breach, making the light splinter off in every direction.  It was nice to look at and it felt good on her skin, so she went out the rest of the way and leaned up on the railing to watch.  There was a feeling in the air, like everything was lighter than it was the day before.  She’d helped make it that way.

            Pretty grand, that.

            She started to hear footsteps shuffling across the stone after a few minutes, smelled the squirmy-nice mix of sleep and sex and something that could have been what home smelled of as a body pressed up against her back and arms braced the railing under hers.

            “Good morning,” Elisabeth murmured, dipping her head to press her lips to the back of Sera’s neck.  It tickled.

            “Morning yourself,” she returned, half-heartedly trying to shoulder Elisabeth off.  “Crowding me, you git.”

            “Too bad.  You’re warm.”  Sera giggled as the tickling started again, managing only to smush herself even closer to Elisabeth.  The struggle caused the light to glint off something on her hand, and they both looked down at the same moment.

            Oh, _balls_.  She’d completely forgotten about that.

            Elisabeth went stock stiff behind her.  “What...how did you...I mean, I–”

            “Found it in your coat, didn’t I?”  Sera stared down at her own hand.  “You were being all sad and weird and I thought I’d sneak around and try to cheer you up.  Got cold.”  Piss, why was this so scary all of a sudden?  It was easier to look at the far-enough-down-to-kill-you ground than it was to think about turning around.  She didn’t want to talk about this, didn’t want to ask, but she had to know.  She just had to.  “Were you ever going to tell me about it?”

            Elisabeth was quiet for almost too long.  “I didn’t think you’d let me give it to you,” she said finally, quiet and sad and a little ashamed.  “You’re not one to be tied down.”

            “I’m not,” Sera agreed, looking at the ring again.  “And I wouldn’tve.  But you didn’t, did you?”  She swallowed hard and turned around.

            “I took it.  S’mine now.  Like you, yeah?”

            Elisabeth managed to look a bunch of things all at once, happy, worried, confused, wary.  She opened and closed her mouth several times before speaking again.  “Of course I am,” she said, taking Sera’s hand up in her own and toying with the band.  “I just...I don’t understand.  Does this mean you’ll–”

            “No,” Sera cut in.  “Frig, no.”

            “But you’ll stay with me?”

            “Duh.”

            “And you’re keeping the ring?”

            “I like it.”  Sera watched the light on the metal, the look of their hands twisted together.  “It’s shiny.”  Elisabeth laughed, short and amazed.

            “That doesn’t make a whit of sense,” she insisted, reaching up to stroke at Sera’s hair.  Sera just grinned, finally as far away from scared as she could be.

            “Doesn’t have to.”  She pulled Elisabeth down and kissed her the way she’d always wanted to kiss a woman, familiar and careless and like there’d be a thousand more moments just like this one.

            “It’s belief, innit.”


End file.
